Mighty Development Update: Becker Designed Robopalooza!

Beck the halls with boughs of holly, Mighties!

We’re feeling the holiday cheer over here, and hope you are, too! This time around we want to celebrate a bit of this journey we’ve had together. It may not be Communi-Day, but we want to show you some contributions to the game and the community by your fellow Beckers!

Have you been curious what the design an enemy reward entails, for example? Well wonder no more, for here are the results…

BACKER REWARD ENEMY DESIGNS! 

We offered quite a few rewards during the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter campaign, including one some of you might remember as the “Help Design an Enemy” reward. This basically gave a few prodigious Beckers the chance to design one of the many enemy robots that would appear in the game!  

How is this different from the enemy design contests we’ve held on the forums, you ask? It goes without saying that these backers didn’t have to compete against their peers for a chance to participate, but the biggest difference lies in the fact that they got to meet with Mighty team staff from comcept and Inti Creates and hammer out a design together! 

We already showed these final designs in our pre-final beta update last time, but this time we’re here to shed some light on how the whole process went down!

PART 1: CHOOSE YOUR CHARACTER

First off, we sent a few of Inti Creates’ documents over to our intrepid designers-to-be. These documents gave simple breakdowns and concept art of the stage they’re set to appear in, Mighty No. 1’s oil refinery. We also explained each enemy’s basic movements, size and so on.

Concept art

Enemy Character #1

Basic Specs

This enemy zips around trying to run down our hero! It can even hop up over certain distances.

Take enough hits and it’ll lose track of Beck, heading in the opposite direction and scattering lingering flames in its wake. 

In-Stage Effect

Areas bathed in oil appear throughout over the stage. These are super slippery for Beck, making it hard for him to stop on a dime.

What’s more, the flames scattered by this enemy will ignite and spread along these oil fields, turning them into a sea of deadly flame!

Enemy Character #2 

Basic Specs

This stationary enemy sits on the ground, waiting until it sense Beck to begin its attack.

It fires 2 waves of projectiles towards Beck. The first volleys are spread far apart, and the second volley fills the gap between the first two. These fireballs extinguish when they make contact with the ground or Beck’s attacks.

In-Stage Effect

Same stage, same oil slicks. Not only do they make Beck lose his footing… 

…but wouldn’t you know it, these fireballs also set off the pools of oil!

PART 2: GET TO WORK! 

With designs in hand, our backers went to work at bringing these enemies to life! 

Enemy Character #1 Design by Mighty No. 50309 Mo Mou

This enemy is always moving, bashing into enemies with its body. It can also hop up vertical surfaces of a certain height. When it gets hit its armor breaks off, making it lose its bearings and shoot off fireballs haphazardly. Currently nameless.

Enemy Character #2 Design by Mighty No. 28499 Carlo Covello

With a design that sits in one place and spews fire in mind, this enemy takes on the appearance of a rust-covered metal stove. The tanks on its back are actually tanks from which it funnels in fuel. This one is called Cinder Spire.

PART 3: A MEETING OF MINDS

After we received their awesome entries, Inti Creates went to work molding them into designs that would fit seamlessly into the Mighty No. 9 world. From there, we used the magic of the internet to hold meetings with each of the backers!

The meeting was held in comcept’s Tokyo office. From comcept we had Director Koji Imaeda, Producer Nick Yu, Art Director Shinsuke Komaki, and Character Designer KIMOKIMO (the latter two called in from comcept’s Osaka office). On Inti Creates side we had Producer Yukimasa Tamura, Director Kinshi Ikegami and Designer Yuuji Natsume. You can just baaarely see it here in the picture, but our backers were phoning in from the PC in the bottom-left corner there. The meeting was a blast, everyone had a lot of fun! We even had a little time left over so we even gave our new designer friends a bit of an inside scoop about some Mighty comings and goings… 

PART 4: PYROTECHNIC PERFECTION! 

Thanks to those awesome meetings we had, we hashed out this perfected final forms! Be sure to take a glimpse at the initial designs up above. 

This design is adorned with the physical expression and luminescent Xel-laden parts reminiscent of the Mighty No. 9 world (word to the wise, all enemies in this world glow the same color as the type of Xel they contain!).

All of the awesome detail in the original design would be lost on-screen, and actually make the enemy look more silly than expected, so with that in mind we simplified the design a bit. We love the idea of the comb-over-style barcode on its head! 

We went with maintaining the overall feel of this design, adjusting the eyes to something more Mighty-like and adding glowing (yellow) Xel bits. All of the holes on the grey metallic parts blended together on the screen, so we made each individual part bigger to make them stand out.

Another thing to note is that the 3D presentation doesn’t allow for nice, thick outlines, so there was a possibility that any parts that went up against a background of the same color would blend in. To counteract this, we made the tips of the head and feet parts a different color. Also, if you think about it, everything in this world is made of Xel, not metal, so there’s no reason for this enemy to rust… that being said, there are plenty of enemies in the game that camouflage themselves into the surroundings, so we figured this particular texture wouldn’t be too farfetched! 

When we rendered these final designs in 3D, here’s what we got!

Having the enemy’s armor fall off makes it easy to tell when it’s going to switch gears. Don’t get too caught up looking at it though; take it out quick, or else…!

These enemies function not only as stoves, but double as gun batteries! Their blistering bombardment sure puts Beck in a pickle!

We hope you got a glimpse of what it was like to make some enemy characters together with the production staff! Mighty No.50309 Mighty Mou, Mighty No. 28499 Carlo Covello, thanks again for these spectacular designs!

Next up, it’s even MORE robots designed by YOU, with your regular dose of KIMOKIMO goodness! Are you ready for round 3?

ROBOT DESIGN CONTEST RESULTS 3!

KIMOKIMO: Time to show off more results for the fabulous KIMOKIMO CUP!! The third installment ended up touching on a major theme, too.

It’s a theme that’s been ever-present since the start of Mighty No. 9, and one I’m also very conscious of: the elements that make a robot. 

It’s such a tricky subject that I’d almost rather jump straight ahead to the fourth design event… but hey, let’s see how our third round of entrants fared. Here we go!! 

●KIMOKIMO CUP PART 3: Lightning or Earth

We collected a total of 59 entries this round. I’d figured that all of you would get tired out by week 3, but to my surprise the competition just got fiercer! 

High quality designs popped up on the thread almost as soon as we posted it! Backer enthusiasm certainly peaked this week, with everyone showing the sheer depth of their potential. I was shocked by the unexpected upswing in popularity… maybe even moreso than the infamous Apple Numbers! 

This time around, we focused our selection on entries from backers who hadn’t been showcased yet.

I’ve spent a bit of time thinking up Egyptian characters in the past, but there’s just something about them, I get so excited! 

Once again, Inafune-san chose a design to put a little more work into. So who is it this time?

Mighty No. 69484 Ezy, congratulations!! Your robot design got polished by the hand of the man himself.

Inafune-san had this to say: 

・I’ve seen this in quite a few designs up to now, but someone might not see this as a robot at first glance. ・Adding screws and other bits to the hand emphasizes its robotic nature. ・Round off the joints like with the Mighty Numbers. Here again, the design comes to bear the INAFKING touch. 

And like always, I give the design a Mighty Number brush-up. 

・The body seems to be made from natural materials, and figuring out how to fuse such opposing natural and mechanical elements gave me some trouble. 

・I decided to make him look like he’s made not of stone, but of concrete, and gave his robotic portions elements of a cement truck. He could throw concrete at his opponent to stop them in their tracks, and create obstacles to shield himself. On top of that, I figured he could coat himself in concrete to boost his defenses.

Since the original design seemed to be based on Germany’s national flag, I made this even more apparent in the design.

“Awwww…” I can hear some of you lament for a certain design getting passed up…hehe, I hear you. But it wouldn’t do for a comcept employee to draw that, no matter how popular it is! 

Now then, here’s another on the house! 

I tried throwing something together from all of the potato-themed robots we received. I went with a submarine design this time, thinking about all of the different types of potato robots that could appear from now on. Its special feature is its sausage-shaped inner tube. I get a bit worried thinking of what will happen when it uses its electric attacks underwater, but it’s bound to be interesting so let’s go for it! 

Here are everyone’s potato robot designs: 

The forum suddenly became a potato robot paradise! I loved seeing all the different types of potato robots the backers posted, and drawing one myself was just as fun. One of the best parts of the internet is seeing such unexpected developments drawing all sorts of people together!

See you again in part 4! 

*A note on the designs:

1) These designs aren’t being presented in any particular order,

2) The designs refined by Inafune-san aren’t the “best designs”, per se, more like designs he thought needed a little extra something to be even better,

3) We ended up prioritizing designs that were both easier to refine and best matching contest specifications. 

Thus ends another update! You know the drill, Mighties: Share your thoughts with us here in the comments, back on the forums, on twitter, or our official Facebook page

Keep spreading that Mighty holiday cheer! (`_´)ゞ

-Dina (Mighty No. 1046), KIMOKIMO (Mighty No. 299) and the Mighty No. 9 Team

Comments

Mighty No. 69484 Eyz's picture

Woah!

Woah!
That's fantastic! I'm truly honored^__^
That is so cool!!!

And as usual, congrats to everyone! Mine wasn't exactly the best one, so I'm super happy to have been picked!

This is shaping up so nicely, can't wait for the game!
Mighty No. 45700 Randy's picture

need help

I need help! Does anyone have the link to the name survey? I keep trying to put it in and got an email saying the name survey has been reopened until the 12th and every time I go to this link I get this " This survey is currently closed. Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance."